Can't Hear Myself Think
by Broken Antler in Winter
Summary: One-Shot based on thwipthwipity's 'Talon Born', where Robin spent a while as the Talon before being rescued by Batman and taken away from that life. Personal Headcanon: When Robin worked for the Court of Owls, he was isolated from any social interaction. From that, a voice rose in his head that he could talk to, and sometimes, even after the Court, the voice would come back.


**This is a one-shot for ****thwipthwipity's**** amazing story, "Talon Born", based on a personal headcanon: **

**Life as a Talon is lonely, so, before he was rescued, Robin would try to hold mental conversations between himself and a voice in his head he calls 'the real Dick Grayson'. Later on, he still holds the conversations whenever he feels overcome with negative emotion. That's where he refines his thoughts and gets all his wordplay.**

* * *

**Can't Hear Myself Think**

* * *

Robin's feelings about everything that resulted from his training to be a Talon was always strictly black and white. He found his inability to be distracted by any nightmares from the past useful, though it was always juxtaposed to his desire to _actually remember _who his family looked like.

The healing factor proved convenient. However, it came with the downside that he would not be able to ever grow more hair than he did when he was first injected with electrum. The fighting skills gained there were essential. The instinct to kill was not.

As he scrolled down the mental list, he always came to one hurdle. And Robin still remembered the loneliness of being a Talon, with no social interaction that was _once _vital for him. Now it only proved redundant.

On the second week of becoming a Talon, Robin began to understand the situation that he was in. Being born an eternal optimist did not help in the situation, though pragmatism soon took over his innate instincts.

And so it began, the long conversations between the stoic Talon and the voice he projected, the voice he called the 'real Dick Grayson', because that was who it was, an optimistic, playful counterpart, one that was never stripped of childhood and completely disillusioned, but one that understood nonetheless.

* * *

_"Lighten up once and a while, o sharply clawed one, and feel the aster! You really are a downer, aren't you?"_

_"I created you as a means for maintaining sanity in an environment unsuitable for a human being. Become a distraction and I will eliminate you." He was the Talon, and he could not afford any distractions,, unless he wished to be frozen by his superiors. Tonight, he was on an all-important mission to kill his first mark._

_"Wait, so you really are going to kill? You can't do that! What about mami and tati? Aunt Karla and Uncle Rick? Johnny? They would never want you to kill! It's against everything they ever taught you about being a good person."_

_Smiling bitterly as he continued his trek to the location, the Talon asked this voice, "Do you still remember them?"_

_"Of course! You want a reminder again, huh?" Though that part of the conversation was always so hauntingly bittersweet, it was also the only comfort against the storm. "Okay, well, mami had the prettiest red hair, and her snickerdoodles were always the best. Tati was big, tall, and strong. Much taller than you'll ever be, shorty-pants. Aunt Karla had golden hair like spun sugar. Uncle Rick gave you candy when mami wasn't looking. Johnny always stole your stuff."_

_"Wonderful. He really was family," Talon snarled. It made him ashamed to remember his cousin that way, but it was that slightest comfort..._

_"Hey! Johnny was always nicer to you...to us, than you are, ever! He was the best cousin in the world." As always, the voice was so very indignant and childish, the very thing the Talon tried to escape._

_"Please, get back on topic. Otherwise I won't need your assistance in maintaining sanity any longer. Insanity is better than listening to childish arguments and indignation."_

_"Mami and Aunt Karla's hair...they were both red after it happened." This time, Talon knew exactly where the conversation was going. The train of thought began, and there was no possible way of stopping it. "It was so high up, you know, and when I first saw them fall down, I thought...maybe, they would still be alive. They defied gravity so many times...but when I saw them stained that, horrible...bloody red, that's when I knew. Are you going to inflict that red on the world now?"_

_The conversation ended there, with that terrifying but so numbed sensation of seeing the fall, slowly, unnaturally flailing in the air before they all became piles of limbs on the unforgiving ground. Suppressing the scream about to tear through his throat, the Talon was once again confronted with his reality._

_At the heart, underneath all the stone walls and brick fortresses, underneath all the emotionless masks and the feigned personality, he was so, so jealous, jealous of that place in his mind where the memories of his family wasn't just defined by blood..._

_His family, only defined by falling..._

_Compartmentalizing his thoughts and moving into action, the Talon remembered the Grandmaster of the Court of Owl's words. "You will kill, you will enjoy it, and you will always serve us." Forever, it was his fate and his destiny, it was what he was born and raised to do._

_"Your mami and tati sold you, don't you understand? They sold you the moment you were born," a mocking voice in his head laughed._

_It didn't matter, nothing mattered anymore. The Talon only slinked through the darkness of the night, thriving in the cold, lifeless shadows. When the moment proved right and the steel proved true, he pounced. And he made his very first kill._

_"You did it. You really did it. I thought you...I thought we were better than this!"_

_The Talon doesn't reply._

* * *

Stopping Joker the last night had been a complete and utter failure, because, out of all of the mistakes he could've made during the chase, he...his grappling line broke apart from a bullet, and he _fell. _His grappling was in the line of fire, and led to a fall from three stories, after which he was almost paralyzed. Now, sitting in Mount Justice to avoid the 'comfort' and 'pity' for the weak that he would find in the Manor, he could only think...

How could he have stopped? Was he really so weak, so fearful? Such a...child?

Once again wearing the stoic face as his team members tried, to no avail, to convince Superboy to watch something other than the static electricity, Robin heard...heard that voice again.

_"You're too hard on yourself, it's disconcerting, heavy on the dis." _Every time Robin fell into a hurdle, the voice, the real Dick Grayson, the one without scars, came back. _"Why don't you just lay back, relax, and feel the aster for once! Really, it was a mistake, everyone makes mistakes! Even Batman, remember that time he-"_

_Not now, _Robin thought, _Anything but now. Do you know we have a martian in our presence?_

As soon as that thought passed through his mind, the feeling of the mindlink crackled. _Who are you talking to? _M'gann M'orzz's voice was worried and anxious.

_I am not talking to anyone, _Robin snarled into the mind link, face still stoic, as he was always taught in the Court. The looks on the other's faces was definitely disbelief, looking at one and another, trying to figure out how to approach the subject. Their thoughts were quickly interrupted by the voice, once again speaking.

_"Hi, you must be the Team I've heard so much about! Robbie's told me so much about you guys! KF, Miss M, Supey, Kal, and 'Mis!" _As quickly as the voice was finished, Robin cut off the mindlink with all the power his mind could muster, leaving the universal look of shock on every face.

"Who...who was that, Robin?" Kid Flash asked warily. As much as he knew about his friend, this seemed to go beyond the boundaries of their friendship. "What was the voice?"

Smirking ever so slightly, Robin responded simply, "A friend."

"Uh, Rob, I'm not sure how to say this, but hearing voices in your head is not exactly healthy." Kid Flash was, of course, used to the oddities of his best friend, but this took his craziness to a whole new level. "Whaddya mean by a friend?" The confusion in his voice was glaring, and the same question was being asked by every person in the room, even Superboy.

_"You need to be more open to your friends, they're like your second family to you! I know, I am you! So get your head out of the gutter and start telling them some straight answers." _

_As always, you're bluntness is astounding._

_"Asterous, more like! I'm you, and you're me, you really lose sight of that sometimes. What's the use of all these secrets? All they bring is pain and suffering, all it does is make you bottle up all the things inside. The only person that you can ever talk to now is me, and I have to admit, as a part of your mind, I'm not very good company. After all, remember how most of our conversations end?" _The sight of falling, falling, _falling so fast and so slow_, flashed through his mind in a sudden vision, while Robin resisted clutching his head in pain.

_You are surprisingly intelligent._

_"Of course I am! I'm you!"_

"Robin, Robin," M'gann M'orzz asked with caution and care, "I can hear him, he's incredibly loud, and I have to say he's _right, _you can't keep bottling up everything!"

As everyone waited in deep anticipation for the next words to come out of Robin's mouth, the static seemed to grow louder than anything in the self-enforced silence. At long last, Robin began, "He is the contingency plan for insanity." Confusion seemed to emanate from the people in the recreational room. "Have you ever been completely and utterly aware and alone?"

"I believe I have not. Please explain its connection to the voice we heard," Kaldur requested lightly.

"When he was alone, he tended to get a little...crazy, a little mad, a little heavy on the dis. He used me as the little tool for finding his mind and putting a leash on it not to lose it to the void. I'm a contingency plan, I stop him from going completely insane, with the price of sacrificing some of his sanity already..."

Voicing the whisper, voicing it to the Team, they could only learn one thing. There were some things in Robin's life, that no one would understand.

_"I'm sorry, I'm sorry for making them think of you as a freak."_

_You think they didn't already? Please, only Richard Grayson can be thought of as normal, and he's only a mask. I'm a skinwalker, shapeshifter, my goal is redemption. That is who I will always be. You should understand, you are me. _

"We're sorry, Robin, it's your business. We shouldn't have interfered."

* * *

The most efficient function of the voice was not to preserve sanity, after Robin had escaped the grasp of the Court of Owls. It was to create a wholly different personality, a personality the world would know as Dick Grayson, charity case ward of the billionaire Bruce Wayne. At Gotham Academy and charity balls, the persona was vital. Sometimes, the mask would take control.

_"Come on, Robbie! You know you want to say hi to Artemis. Just this once, instead of me being commanded around, you should do something for my amusement. It'll be turbing!"_

_No, I will not compromise my identity._

_"You really are no fun. Come on, just this once! Or else I'll talk to Miss M every time you guys have a mission. Okay, so...go to Artemis from behind, say, 'We'll laugh about it some day,' and then take a picture."_

_Why do I even put up with you?_

_"I'm incredibly charming, that's why. Oh, and I'm modest too."_

Walking up to Artemis from behind, Dick Grayson quickly put his arm around her shoulder and smiled the same plastic smile he always used for the crowd. "We'll laugh about this someday," he managed to grind out of his unwilling mouth. Quickly scampering off, he heard the voice say, _"Well done, my young padawan learner."_

_Shut up._

* * *

**Took away some of this fic's weight by adding the comic relief at the end, but who cares? I just couldn't resist trolling Artemis, as if anyone in the world could. There is just something about her that is so entirely troll-able... **

**Review, and if you're not reading this because you've read Talon Born before...**

**Read Talon Born. You must. Please. For the love of god!**


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